


Mythos

by Wordlet



Series: Hello to a World [1]
Category: Phantomarine (Web Comic)
Genre: Amputation, Boats and Ships, Folklore, Gen, Ghosts, Lighthouses, Medical Procedures, Scars, Vignettes, Worldbuilding, oceanic imagery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:01:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26681056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wordlet/pseuds/Wordlet
Summary: The Candlelight Sea and all of its pieces that churn on and on, so different from anywhere else in the world.
Series: Hello to a World [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1941448
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	Mythos

**Author's Note:**

> Cause this comic is a vibe and a half and I sure love writing vibes.

You see them in ports sometimes. The real sailors.

They're easy to tell apart because where the others have floodlights and a healthy degree of caution, true sailing ships are festooned with glow and their crews speckled with scars.

Sea-farers have always been a superstitious bunch, and exaggerators to boot, but one thing that is never disputed is the importance of light to keep away the ghosts. A sailor will suggest you watch the color of the sky before weighing anchor and advise you note the flavor of the wind when packing supplies- but they'll take you by the shoulders and beg you to keep a glow charm around your neck and a vial of biolume in your pocket. Captains will strangle the mast with strings of lights and meticulously check each bulb hanging from the railings before the sun sets each night. The one request a prisoner will always be granted is the plea for a candle. Denying them that is too cruel.

People laugh. They say the ghosts are only in the sea, and they can't climb out of the water. But these people live on land where the harbors are kept lit by towering lighthouses. Here the sand sparkles in the beams of it and the sea ghosts can’t reach the shore no less attempt to climb out. The people here don't see storms. They don’t see when the sea and sky become one and the deck floods with wind and spirit. The waves refuse to lie in their ocean bed and reach over the sides, slopping in around worn sea legs. Here the water comes alive- despite being very, very dead.

In the whitecaps faces glower. Fingers outstretched in the crest of the waves and bellies lying empty in the swells. They rise from the sea like a monster's maw, and every drop is acid- hungry acid. 

Because yes, the sailors have scars from ropes that wrapped around stray limbs and cannon fire and splintered wood- but mostly they are the spattered touch of sea spray.

Not the actual Bite, not the white fingerprints left by ghosts where they tore away chunks of spirit. Nor the bleached skin where they nibbled on another's soul. No, these are the aftermath, where knives hollowed out surface damage and left simpler wounds that would not spread. Sometimes they are cut out and sometimes they are burned. Small scalloped chunks removed where a wave splashed off the bow and onto a shoulder, or long channels of scar tissue where a drop of sea ghost trailed down an arm.

When the damage is too deep or the spread too far, the scars themselves are cut away, and the limb offered back to those that had already stolen it.

Back on shore the boats look extravagant. Like they have a personal vendetta against shadows. But at sea the ocean leaps up and the ghosts are incinerated in the lamp light. The sailors on land look jaded and piecemeal. The wounds often look small and don't carry the taboo of the Bitten.

But at sea the real sea-farers sing of the soul they've already begun to lose and only feel whole when the ghosts moan back their own aching ballads.


End file.
